Dr. Jeffrey Pearson, medical director of the department of pathology at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Mich., wanted to increase the efficiency and reduce the expense of transcribing medical reports in his department.
 
To meet those goals he installed ScanSoft's Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 to record gross inspections, microscope results and diagnoses. Pearson and five other pathologists generate 26,000 reports that need to be transcribed each year. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 is speech-recognition software that allows a user to electronically dictate letters or reports that are then automatically transcribed on a PC.
 
Pearson uses a wireless headset to dictate results of gross inspections in the pathology cutting room -- the wireless nature of the headset lets him move around the room, retrieving specimen after specimen. When he returns to his office to do microscopic work and perform diagnoses, Pearson speaks into a wired microphone, sitting at his desk.
 
"There are a couple of savings," says Pearson. "There's the savings in transcription costs and more efficient use of my time. We had four full-time transcriptionists. Now we only have two people working in those jobs, but they don't do transcription anymore -- they are more like office managers."
 
Pearson's implementation of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 comes with a pathology lexicon, which supplies commonly used terms. ScanSoft provides 13 other vocabularies for different medical specialties.
 
With the use of macros supplied with NaturallySpeaking, Pearson can save time dictating reports.
 
"There are thousands of different diagnoses I could make for different specimens. We went in an built codes called macros, so if I have a gall bladder with gallstones and chronic inflammation, I can dictate 'Gall Bladder 1 Final' and it will put in the description and diagnosis automatically."
 
"The system is more efficient once you set it up," says Pearson. "I work faster and make less mistakes as far as transcription goes.”

Scansoft’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Medical starts at $1,100 and is available now. It runs on Windows 2000 or XP.